So you literally copy and paste and Google doesn't care? That is cool then. Thanks for sharing your experience, maybe I waste my time getting original content. I base the "hurt me" statement on the fact that my original articles outperform my content that is spun. Since then I've updated all my articles and they have risen to pages 1 and 2. Most were chilling on the edge of page three. Disclaimer: these sites are 8 months old. It could be the mystical "sandbox"
Personally, I'm not risking it on my long term sites. That's why I'll only copy and paste for my churn and burn sites. But the ultimate factor I look at is my CTR's to Amazon. They're higher for my original articles. That's all I care about.
Thanks for the discussion I look forward to learning with you guys
I have a news auto-blog(no spinning), 2yrs old now, not a single piece of original content, not even the static pages(which are copy/paste from Wikipedia).
It ranks in top 5 for viral news within minutes of posting.
This was a new site when I started it, and my backlinks would make most people cringe(50,000 GSA blast directly to site, 10,000 blog comments, 1,000 shitty web2s).
I couldn't tell you how this site has survived, let alone ranks.
I have another site that posts 200 job postings a day, pulled via indeed api, so straight copied content. The blog section has approx 100 articles, which is a mix of copy/paste(some expired, some directly from active competitors), PLR(spun and unspun), and original written content. This site ranks well, for 3 keywords, it ranks above the active site I copy pasted from.
This site was also new, never used, when registered 2.5yrs ago.
I haven't build a link in over a yr, I just auto-syndicate all content to 4 social media profiles, 4 social bookmarking sites, and 5 web2s. I used to blast those properties with 100,000GSA blasts with url shorteners, but haven't done that in a year.
That site ranks well for many keywords and draws about 10,000 visitors from organic(including from many of the copy/paste articles).
A month ago I started a site on an expired domain(15RDs: bloomburg, business weekly, motley fool to name a few), which I only used that domain because I had it laying around for a yr and needed a brandable domain for this project. I have only built links from my Facebook fanpage so far, and that page only has 3 likes at the moment.
I have uploaded 300 PLR articles(no spinning) about a specific broad niche and interlinked it like Wikipedia(15 per post avg). I am planning another 1,000 posts of PLR content(no spinning).
It has been getting about 30 unique views a day for the past week.
This site has been built specifically for marketing on social media, so I never cared about the SERPs, just started peeping it for fun.
These are just some examples of sites where I have completely unoriginal content, that were build for social projects and have somehow ended up ranking well, or growing their ranking.
I am only working on 1 Amazon affiliate site right now, but it is all original content(outsourced). I could see how that would help in conversions.
So, yeah, your monetization strategy matters a lot, because some generic content just won't convert worth a shit for Amazon, but is great for other advertising.